


Regrets

by Sinful Words (MontanaHarper)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-16
Updated: 2004-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/Sinful%20Words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's really only one thing Elijah's not willing to talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meghan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Meghan).



> ...who held my (virtual) hand as I watched Graham Norton's interview with Elijah, debated with me the meaning of Elijah's facial expressions, and didn't mock me for my embarrassment squick. This story is my way of trying to figure out the emotion behind his momentary turning away from one of the Theban Band's Frodo/Sam pictures.
> 
> There are two Gimli/Legolas pieces by the Theban Band; for the purposes of this story, I've decided that Elijah's talking about "Elf Worship" when he starts to describe one of them.
> 
> I've taken a few liberties with the transcription of the interview. Mainly, I've cleaned up the dialogue a little so that it reads more like fiction dialogue and less like sloppy real-life conversation.

>   
> _Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted._  
>  — **Jonathan Raban**  
> 

The questions are familiar and Elijah knows the answers almost by heart, but he feels an obligation to alter his delivery and his lines at least a little, to say something different than he's said the past half-dozen times he's been asked about the fans. So he changes his speech and leads up to sharing the one new thing he's discovered since Jay brought up Ringers the other day.

"They write stories. They write fan fiction," he says, sure that Graham knows all about this already; he's seen Graham's interview with Orlando—the one where Orlando admits, much to Graham's delight, that he has no idea what his fans get up to on the internet. Elijah's hoping, though, that the explicit art will be new. Shocking even, because it'll be fun to beat Graham at his own game. If, of course, Elijah can remember the URL for the site. "There's a website. I wish you could pull it up. Does this have the internet?" he points to the computer on the desk behind Graham.

"Yes." Graham draws the word out, his tone saying that he has a suspicion of where Elijah's going with this all and that he's just waiting for Elijah to get to the punch line.

Unfortunately, the URL is still eluding him, and he can't even remember the site name or who the artists are so they can Google it. "I wish I had the address. I don't remember the address of the site—"

But Graham's one step ahead of him now, "What's it called?" he asks, and he sounds just like a mischievous little boy who knows the answer to the question but is asking it anyway.

And Elijah gets that they're on the same page, now. So to speak. Since he's not sure if knowing the name of it would make him look cooler or geekier or just fucking creepy, he gives up trying to remember it and just goes with the description. "There's a website where they've done these artistic renditions of—"

"I might have that," Graham interrupts, and Elijah suddenly feels a little like Frodo when he's halfway to Mordor, with the ring weighing more and more heavily on him, only this is his own damn fault because it's just such an _interesting_ phenomenon, and how can Elijah _not_ want to talk about how the fans have co-opted the story and the characters—and even the cast's physical appearances—in their affection for these incredible movies?

"Have you seen this?" Elijah's pretty good at not being embarrassed, and equally good at hiding it on those rare occasions when he is. "It's homosexual images of Frodo and Sam, and Aragorn and Boromir together," he says, the unnerving images playing through his mind.

He doesn't have an eidetic memory, not by a long shot, but he's generally pretty good with visuals and these particular ones have stuck with him for the last several days. Now he's not even really sure why he brought up the whole subject of fan fiction and fan art except that it's absolutely fucking fascinating on an intellectual level. He's kind of committed to the topic now, though, because Graham's got this look in his eye like even if Elijah changes the subject he's not going to let it go, and so Elijah soldiers on, suddenly remembering the most disturbing picture out of all of them.

"Gimli and Legolas! There's a shot—" But he thinks better of trying to describe the image of Orlando-as-Legolas laid out like a banquet before John-as-Gimli—mostly because he doesn't want to put John and sex in the same thought—and quickly changes tack, "And they look like us. It's not paintings; it looks like us."

Graham's fiddling with the mouse. "Here we go," he says.

"You've got to see...." Elijah cranes his neck a little, trying to see the screen over Graham's shoulder. "This is the best thing in the world." And he really means it, at least at this moment. Because it's wonderful that the fans love _The Lord of the Rings_ as much as he does, even if they show it by writing or drawing or photoshopping him fucking Sean. Or, you know, vice versa. It's really not that different from playing with the action figures, when you get right down to it.

"It's called 'Lord of the Rings: Hobbit Love,'" Graham reads aloud from the screen.

The audience erupts into whoops and catcalls, and Elijah cracks up. It's an unchanging truism of the universe: porn has mass appeal. Graham scrolls down slowly, giving everyone a chance to see the images on the monitors, and there's a chorus of "awww"—instigated initially by Graham, but quickly picked up by others when the second and third pictures come on screen.

And then the fourth picture comes up, and Elijah has to look away, because suddenly he feels a little claustrophobic, like when his attention was caught by a picture—plastered on the front of a tabloid—of him and Franka kissing. It's not so much that he minds people knowing about him or his life because he tries never to do anything he'll be ashamed of tomorrow; failing that, he refuses to be embarrassed about things he can't change.

Still, some of this fan art gets a little close to the one subject he refuses to discuss with the media: his intimate relationships. Oh, he's talked a lot about how Sean is like a brother to him, and how much love he has for the rest of the Fellowship; those details he doesn't mind sharing. He's even read a pretty wide selection of the homoerotic fan fiction about himself without batting an eye. Somehow, though, seeing something that, until now, has only been in his imagination—reserved for private, late-night fantasies—in living color, with an audience full of people as witnesses.... He feels the shudder coming on and tries—mostly successfully—to suppress it.

"The thing that's so unbelievably creepy about it is that it does look so— It's us." He stumbles over the words, trying to explain the aspect of the whole thing that bothers him without _really_ having to explain.

"I know."

"They may as well be photos. And I certainly never took a photo like that." Even to Elijah's own ears it sounds too much like an overly emphatic denial, like the words of someone desperate to be believed. What's the Shakespeare quote? 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks'?

"The weird thing about that—" Graham starts, and Elijah has to cut in, has to derail whatever it is that Graham's starting to say because he can think of too many weird things about the whole situation and none of them are things he really wants to discuss because they all come too close to the great taboo subject.

So he says, "I love that you have that. That's great." And he hopes that Graham won't ask how he found the site, or why he looked at it, or even why he brought it up today, because Elijah really doesn't have any good answers for those questions.

But Graham pushes on and says, "It's weird because we looked at it in the office and I thought, 'Oh, we might offend him.' But you brought it up, so there you go."

True enough. And if Elijah were the kind of person to indulge in regrets, he'd probably be regretting it. Instead, he smiles and waits for Graham to move on.


End file.
